Darracq 12-hp 'genevieve'

This is the car that gave its name to, and is therefore the real leading lady of, the 1953 film 'Genevieve', which is set against the backdrop of the London to Brighton run.

This is the lady who gave her name and is therefore the real leading character of the 1953 film 'Genevieve', which is set against the backdrop of the London to Brighton Run. This 1904 Darracq is, in the film, the hobby car of lawyer Alan McKim, played by actor John Gregson. Remarkably, Gregson does drive the car in the film, but in real life cannot drive at all. At that time the Englishman Norman Reeves is the actual owner of the Darracq. He restores the car and gives it a name: 'Annie'. When the Darracq is selected to appear in the film, director Henry Cornelius is anything but happy with the name. He rechristens the car 'Genevieve', after the patron saint of Paris, the city where the car was built. The film becomes a great success and in 1953 Genevieve also takes part, amid huge public interest, in the 'real' London to Brighton Run. Behind the wheel is the Dutch rally driver Maurice Gatsonides, who had won the Monte Carlo Rally earlier that year. The Darracq itself was discovered shortly after the Second World War in East London, in a junk-filled yard. There were fifteen car chassis lying there, two of them from a Darracq. Those two chassis were bought for 25 pounds by Peter Venning, who made one out of the two and shortly afterwards found a two-seater body in a barn. Because Venning had just married and had neither time nor money, he sold the car to Norman Reeves, who completed the Darracq in the form it still has today. At a certain point, however, Reeves grew tired of all the publicity around the Darracq caused by the film and sold the car to a friend in Australia. This friend displayed Genevieve in a museum for more than forty years. In the 1990s the car was acquired by the Louwman Museum and since then has once again been a regular and much-loved participant in the London to Brighton Run. A nice little detail is the organ-pipe exhaust.